


We don’t get to choose who we love

by ChocoNut



Series: Tales of love (Season 3/4) [9]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Deviates after 3x7, F/M, Fluff, Love Confessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-24 05:31:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20700740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoNut/pseuds/ChocoNut
Summary: On their way back from Harrenhal, Jaime begins a heart-felt conversation by the camp-fire with his wench one night.





	We don’t get to choose who we love

**Author's Note:**

> Fluff, it is, again! Thanks for reading, and enjoy.

The spirits of Steelshanks and his men soaring sky high, they had taken to drinking and dancing the night away as soon as they'd made camp, making the most of every available chance to run amok. Jaime, however, refused to partake of the ale, staying a few feet away from the revelry, the raucous howls of ‘_ The bear and the maiden fair’ _ taking him back to the fateful moment they’d been ambushed, the memory drawing his attention to the wench who was sitting some distance away. 

_ In this light, she could be a beauty, _he found himself thinking, admiring her in the flickering glow of the fire, discovering that he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

The quiet trust and understanding she’d shown in him when he had reluctantly taken her leave in her cell continued to haunt him, piercing through his soul, asking him questions he dreaded finding answers to, showing him facts he didn't have the nerve yet to face. That the change in her opinion of him would have such a profound impact on him wasn’t something he was prepared for.

His confusion did nothing to keep him away from her. “My lady,” he called as he approached her, settling down against a neighbouring tree.

She stiffened the moment he sat down by her side. “Ser Jaime,” she addressed him, the way his name and his title fell off her lips tearing his emotions to pieces. Coming from the woman who once had no qualms about calling him _ Kingslayer _to his face, this was too much to bear, too good to be true.

“Those cuts look awful,” he remarked, eyeing the wounds the bear had given her with distaste.

She shrugged away his concern, grabbing a twig from the ground and fiddling with it. “They’re nothing.” 

“Did they--” he stopped, unable to put words to his thoughts. How was he to purge his mind of the fears that had been burdening him ever since he’d left her at the mercy of those nasty shits? “Did Locke and his men rape or assault you, my lady?” he managed to ask, desperate to learn more about her plight, to alleviate her suffering to the extent he could. 

To his relief, she shook her head, though the pain in her eyes, the aftermath of her encounter with those beasts, was abundant. 

He reached over to feel the bloodied scratches adorning her neck and chest. “If only I had been diligent enough to take you with me,” he thought aloud, regretting the horrible fate he’d put her through as he gingerly ran a fingertip down her neck, “you wouldn’t have had to suffer this.”

She quivered, but the way she lowered her lashes told him her shivers had nothing to do with the slight chill in the air. “Why?” she asked, and he could sense her speak, his thumb now gently stroking her throat.

The rhythmic movements of his fingers ceased after a moment's consideration. “Why--what?”

“You were well away,” she reminded him, drawing absent-minded patterns on the mud with the twig she'd been playing with, “so why come back?”

_ Because I love you. _

Stunned, he dropped his hand, speechless and frozen for a while, the spontaneous reason his mind had come up with for his rare act of selflessness, a resounding punch to his gut. Overpowered by the unexpected emotions that began to creep within him, he took to dodging the challenge of having to answer her. “Many reasons,” he eluded her.

She raised her eyes to battle his, her reluctance to let the matter be evident in her persistence, despite a touch of softness around her. “Like?”

“No one has ever taken the Kingslayer’s word to heart, yet you did. You believed me,” he said, succumbing to the temptation to confront her with the doubt that had been troubling him for days, this giving him the additional advantage of side-stepping her question. “Why did you begin to trust me?” 

The delightful touch of shyness in her expression had vanished, and she switched, at once, to the warrior he’d forced himself to loathe all along. “I asked you a question first,” she snapped.

“And I’m not used to being questioned on personal matters,” he bounced back, matching her tone, miffed that she’d reverted to the gruffness she effortlessly adopted around him.

“Get used to it then,” she went on in the same vein.

“Oh I could,” he chimed, his anger dissolving at the possible implications of her words, “as long as it’s _ you _ who does the questioning, wench,” he added, a playful lilt to his tone.

In the pissed off tone she usually took with him, she retorted, “I’m not your--” and then broke off, a faint glow of pink decorating her cheeks.

“What?” he stepped in, in a tone completely contrasting hers. 

She retreated to the trunk and folded her legs, her knees touching her chin just the way they had in the bathtub, a sign that she’d withdrawn into an impenetrable shell. “Nothing,” she dismissed him. Gone was the authoritative steeliness she’d attacked him with earlier, and in its place was back the coyness again when she turned her face away. 

“Where do we stand, Brienne?” he asked the difficult question, tilting his face to look her in the eye. “I’m sure we’re way beyond adversaries now, aren’t we? Allies, perhaps?”

She acknowledged him with a slow nod, her gaze dropping to her knees. 

“Is that all?” he went on, hoping to get more than cryptic gestures in response.

“I have immense regard for you,” she said, her voice strained and her eyes still cautiously away from his.

“Is that all?” he repeated, hoping the signs he’d read in her expressions pointed to something far deeper than friendship.

“You know that I trust you,” she told him, feeding him accurate, but useless information.

“Is that all?” he went again, his patience thinning.

“Was that not why you returned for me?” she inquired, this time, granting him the privilege of a glimpse of her lovely eyes.

“I asked you a question first,” he chided her.

“I don’t care,” came her instantaneous reply, “I’m not used to being questioned on personal matters.”

“Get used to it then,” he said, without batting an eyelid.

“Why? You aren’t my--” She bit her lip, blushing harder than she had earlier.

The look in her eyes telling him that he was on the right path, he shuffled closer. “So where were we?” he returned to the subject she’d tried to deflect. “Friends, we definitely are, but no more than that, is it?”

“You speak as if there could be something else between us,” she said, her voice slightly above normal, a mild tremor to it when she went on, “By tomorrow, we’ll be back in King’s Landing.” 

This was her subtle way of telling him that Cersei waited for him, and that he’d have no excuse to see her again. No chance to tell her that it wasn’t his sister he craved for these days. It wasn’t Cersei he’d saved from rape. It wasn’t Cersei he’d jumped into a bear-pit for. It wasn’t Cersei who’d bewitched his mind and stolen his heart. He loved Cersei, no doubt, and would bring down the Seven Kingdoms for her, but like a brother would for a sister.

It wasn’t Cersei anymore, but this strange mannish woman who’d driven him mad and captured his body mind and soul. The moon, he wished to pluck out from the skies, and lay it at her feet, every corner of his tormented heart aching for a chance to do it.

“That’s what’s been giving me sleepless nights the last two days, wench,” he admitted, his morale sinking at the prospect of parting ways with her.

“Why should it? You’ll be back to the woman you love,” she said, her voice bearing an edge of agitation to it, “something you’ve been wanting for months--”

“So naive I’ve been all these months,” he intervened, deciding he could hold it back no more, “and so blinded by arrogance and selfishness, that it never occurred to me what I truly desire.”

She let go of her knees and loosened a bit. “What is it that you desire?”

“Honour,” he said, bringing up the first thing that came to his head.

“You _are_ a man of honour--”

“A chance to be the knight I’ve always wanted to be,” he continued, opening up further to the only person he’d trusted his worst secret with.

“You are one,” she asserted, “you’ve rescued a lady from a fate worse than death. What more could--”

“Your trust, Brienne.”

“You have that too,” she softly assured him, a shadow eclipsing the radiance her face had worn when she went on, “and you’ll soon be one with the love of your life. What more do you want?”

“The love of my life,” he replied, wanting to drag this no further.

She shifted slightly under his intense gaze. “I don’t understand--”

“And her love in return,” he whispered, deciding to bare it all to her, to leave nothing unsaid for this was a rare moment, to be seized and taken advantage of. “A chance to show her how much I love her.” 

She stiffened again. “Ser Jaime--”

“An opportunity to give her the world,” he went on, unaffected by her interruption, his hand, once again, finding its way to her neck. “To soothe her wounds and keep her safe forever, to save her from bears and other beasts, human or otherwise,” he expressed his wish, his fingers tracing the dried blood on her chest. “Unless she’s still in love with _that_ pretty king, who, despite his death, is proving to be a tough threat--”

“Oh, stop it!” she cried, her liquid eyes making him want to pin her to the tree and kiss her until her eyeballs popped out. 

“Not in love with Renly anymore then?” he inquired hopefully.

She was prompt to ward off his question again. “What about your sister?”

“I asked you the question first,” he murmured, sliding his hand down her chest, taking a moment to feel her heart for her pulse.

“I--” she stammered, when his fingers brushed against the swell of her breasts. “I’m not used to being questioned on personal matters,” she breathed, her chest heaving under his touch.

“Get used to it then,” he whispered, leaning into her. 

“Why?” she gasped, drinking him in with half-lidded eyes when his lips were on hers. “You aren’t my--” 

He kissed her, his fingers inching up her neck as his mouth explored hers, her cracked lips far more appealing than the soft nectar that was Cersei’s; her freckled skin evoking more desire in him than his sister’s flawless beauty; everything about her far more endearing than any woman he’d set eyes on. That fateful jump had ensured their lives had become intertwined forever, altering his thinking, instilling in him the awareness of his feelings for her, showing him there was still hope for him to become the man he was meant to be.

“--husband _ yet _, wench,” he finished her sentence, rubbing the tip of his nose against hers. “Doesn’t mean I never will be.”

A series of vigorous blinks and a deepening blush conveyed her response, layered by a touch of doubt, though, her non-verbal consent was. “But your sister--”

“Cersei wasn’t my choice,” he reflected, caressing her chin, “nor are you. And it wasn’t my choice to fall out of love for her either. It happened. Just as _ you _ did, the goodness in you making me fall hard for you.”

“We don’t get to choose who we love,” she quoted him, a smile flickering at the corners of her mouth. “You’re the last man I’d have chosen had my prejudice for you not been wiped away, had it not dawned on me that it couldn’t have been anyone other than you. So in a way, Ser Jaime, I’m glad I never had to make a choice,” she said, professing her love at last. “And,” she added, “it never really was a choice between you and Renly, was it?”

Before he could find her a fitting response, she drew him into an embrace, and their lips met in another kiss, one that he knew, was just among a lifetime of a million more to come.


End file.
